10/11/25
Welcome back to another blog post in the Richardson Missions saga! We’ve had a great week and we have lots of mission work to report. Let’s do a day by day report for this post. There’s a beautiful new hymn that has been on my mind this week and it sums up some of what I’m feeling as we work through each day and week. You can hear this beautiful hymn, God’s Gracious Love, here.
Sunday:
We spent most of the day Sunday at the church enjoying General Conference. Todd set up the broadcast and before the session began there were previous choirs shown on the video. Our lovely friend Sarah had performed in one of those choirs a couple of years ago and she said, “There I am!” We were able to pause the video and get a picture of Sarah now with Sarah then! We love Sarah so having two of her for a minute was a real treat. 🙂
The tradition here is that we watch the Saturday evening session together at the church on Sunday, share a potluck meal after, and then watch the next session. It was fun to enjoy conference with friends and district members. Here are some of the people we love:
Below left, Faith and her two daughters, Doris, & President Larbie. Below right, Elder Mogenhan with Sævar & his son.
And, some of our sweet friends from Selfoss, L-R: Greta, Perlynda, Bárður, Valla, & Gummi.
And, you never know what you will get at an Icelandic potluck! We had lots of food to enjoy. I contributed a crockpot of potatoes and a bowl of chicken salad sandwiches. It was all yummy.
And, the elders did the dishes! These are great men doing all sorts of good work. One funny note about the church kitchen — the water coming out of the faucet is so hot it can literally burn you. When we were new on our mission one of the elders warned me about the lava water. It is an appropriate description. Below, L-R: Elder Mijares, Elder Morel, & Elder Moyer.
We’re not done with Sunday yet! I brought my knitting to work on during conference. I am currently making a scarf. It is full of mistakes but I am moving forward with this project. Todd took a sneaky picture so I thought I’d let you get an idea of how the scarf is going. I’m making progress! Helga, my knitting teacher, is sure I can knit myself a sweater before we finish our mission. We will see about that!
The final conference session was shown live here from 8-10 pm. We were happy to watch it at home in our pjs. We loved hearing from President Oaks, along with all of the other speakers. (Elder Bednar is pictured below.) If you would like to hear a wonderful, inspired talk from our inspired leader you can find President Oaks’ talk here.
Monday:
I don’t have any Monday pictures to share this week but you probably already know what we did for the day. It was our regular Monday schedule. I made dinner for our Young Single Adult Institute/Family Home Evening night and I cleaned our apartment. What was for dinner, you ask? Baked potatoes with chili, homemade rolls, and chocolate crinkles. Todd worked with Elder Mogenhan to take our car in for its regular maintenance check up so we didn’t have a car for much of the day. We had a good work day at home and enjoyed class and dinner in the evening with our institute group.
Tuesday:
Much of Tuesday looked like this:
We had lots of clerical work to do. We are doing work on our Emotional Resilience class that starts soon and we are working on several unit history projects for the district. Both of these projects mean a lot of time at the computer. Tuesday we spent a bunch of time working on some training for the senior couples who will be facilitating the emotional resilience course. We love projects like this! We will work together in a shared google doc, both making suggestions and corrections until we have things put together in the way that feels right. Todd and I will be facilitating a class and coordinating four other senior couples who will also be facilitating classes. It will be fun to get to know more missionaries, both senior and junior, as we work together on increasing our emotional resilience.
We got outside for a cold walk Tuesday afternoon. There’s snow on the tops of the mountains and a cold breeze in the air. Winter is not far off!
Each night around 9 pm we try to play cards together. Our current game of choice is Kings in the Corner. It’s a fun version of rummy and I have been on a terrible losing streak. However, Tuesday night I won three games in a row so it is necessary to document this in this blog for time and all eternity! This may never happen again so you are all my witnesses. Not only did I win, I won three games! If you never hear anything again about Kings in the Corner it will be because I never won again. 😉 (Edit to add – on Wednesday night Todd won three games in a row. My winning streak quickly came to an end!)
Wednesday:
I was happy to be able to donate blood again on Wednesday this week. In Iceland you have to wait four months between donations as opposed to just two months between donations in the states. This was my second donation and I’m glad I can do this service.
We had a great ministering visit with friends in our branch Huaskar & Nohemy and their sons Camilo & Andrès. (They also have a daughter, Paula, who wasn’t home that afternoon.) Huaskar & Nohemy moved their family to Iceland from Venezuela a few years ago seeking a more stable place to raise their family. In Venezuela Nohemy was a lawyer and a judge and Huaskar was an engineer. Here they are working in an assisted living facility as they learn Icelandic and English and do what is required to become Icelandic citizens. They told us that working with the older Icelandic people really helps them learn Icelandic. Apparently the older people always forget what they said so they keep repeating the same things over and over and it’s good practice when learning a new language! We had a hilarious visit trying to understand each other!
We really admire Huaskar & Nohemy for their efforts to start fresh in a new country, learn two new languages, and care for their family. While Todd and I only speak English, they came to Iceland only speaking Spanish. Now we were able to converse fairly well in English with help from the kids! And they all speak good Icelandic. Nohemy also made a delicious caramel flan to share with us.
We had another multilanguage meeting Wednesday with President Ramos, the branch president in the 2nd branch. He speaks Spanish and some English. Todd speaks English. 🙂 Google translate made up the difference. In this picture they are taking turns talking into Todd’s phone and having it translate so they could have a conversation. It did the job! But we both wish we could communicate in other languages with our friends here. Icelandic and Spanish would serve us well, but we are very firmly stuck in English.
Thursday:
We started Thursday as we do every week, with a mission wide zoom meeting. Todd and I were able to participate and share details about our upcoming Emotional Resilience class with the missionaries. It was fun to be able to talk with them and we look forward to getting to know more of them as we work together on this project.
We also spent some time with the Hutchings. They flew from Akureyri to Reykjavik on Thursday for a weekend of meetings. They are adjusting to new mission life and we are glad to have them here.
Friday:
Friday was packed from start to finish. We spent the morning at the church for our October Iceland Zone Conference. We feel very blessed to be working with such great couples on our mission. President & Sister Davidson came to town to join us. And we have the Mogenhan’s and the Hutchings who both work right along with us to support the mission in Iceland.
We had a few hours of teaching and role play exercises. We were taught by President Davidson, our zone leaders, Elder Nielsen & Elder Benzley, and our district leaders, Elder Moyer & Elder Geertsen.
Next week three of our elders complete their missions and travel home. Elder Morel, Elder Mijares, & Elder Morales have all been so wonderful to work with. They are excellent missionaries and converted young men. They have trained us well and we will miss them! They are all completing honorable missions.
In the Iceland Zone we have a tradition of waving off the departing missionaries with an Iceland flag walk of honor. These boys deserve it!
I also have to share this picture of Elder Benzley just because it is so cute. 🙂 He is another excellent missionary in Iceland and he loves God and the Icelandic people so much. Fun fact, Elder Benzley’s father was also a young missionary in Iceland many years ago.
And, here are the women of the Iceland Zone! It’s just us three with all these men and I think the three of us are doing a pretty good job at being sister missionaries!
For our zone activity we went to the National Museum of Iceland. It is full of artifacts and history about the country. None of the young missionaries had been here before but they have all walked by it many times while they are out doing their work. It was a good and educational way to spend a couple of hours.
I enjoyed the displays and I’m always drawn to the handwork. Just look at these carvings and embroidery!
I especially loved this carving in whale bone. I saw the feet above the people and was confused until I read the description. Can you tell what is happening in this carving?
This is representing Christ’s ascension into heaven following His resurrection. Luke 24:51 says, “And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven.” Yep, those are His feet and His apostles are watching as He ascends. Love it!
Friday wasn’t over yet. After the zone activities had completed we went to President Davidson’s hotel and he and Todd had a presidency meeting in the lobby! I found a quite spot to knit while they worked on mission business.
We met back up with the Davidson’s, the Hutchings, and the Mogenhan’s for a delicious dinner together. It was wonderful to visit and support one another. We appreciate each other and the work we do together. And we know the Davidson’s appreciate the work we are all doing in Iceland for the mission and for the district.
As we took the Hutchings back to their hotel for the night we made a quick stop at Hallgrimskirkja to see it lit up and shining pink. (Yes, the picture looks more purple, but it is pink.) Reykjavik has several pink lights at different strategic locations throughout the month of October to support Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I have to say, it was an impressive sight!
We drove past Harpa on our way home and, guess what? Purple! I read an article that says the purple lights are for support of people with disabilities. I appreciate all of these causes and love the special effects it adds to the dark night.
We finally made it to the end of Friday. It was a great day!
Saturday:
Fortunately Saturday wasn’t quite as busy as Friday. We had our usual work to do. Todd spent time preparing a talk for our Saturday evening district conference meeting. We went grocery shopping in the rain and did some chores at home.
Iceland does not have a stake, instead it is currently organized as a district. This weekend is our district conference, which is similar to a stake conference. We had one meeting this evening and there will be one meeting tomorrow. We enjoyed being together with our friends and hearing from our leaders, including Todd who gave an inspiring talk about unity. In the picture below I’m with my friends Sarah, Lilja, & Greta. The group was small tonight, but the Spirit was there.
And that’s it! We’ve made it to the end of another week in Iceland. Thank you for spending some time with us! We are having a wonderful experience and we feel your love and support. You are part of God’s gracious love in our lives. Thank you.
Check out Todd’s social media for more pictures and videos! We didn’t visit a single waterfall this week . . . we’ll have to remedy that next week. 😉 You can find him here:
Leave a Reply